


The Body's Share

by amerande



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Commanding Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), First Kiss, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Mush, Fluff and Smut, Historical, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Spouses (Good Omens), M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Porn with Feelings, Temptation, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), foundational doctrinal works as weird emotional foreplay, i can never look cs lewis in the eye again, religious themed pining, someone's gonna smite me for this and tbh i deserve it, things are said that I the author was NOT prepared for so make of that what you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:42:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22134997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande
Summary: Aziraphale had been at the Abbey of Saint Victor for five years, and he found his thoughts returning constantly to Crowley.OR: The one I'm going to have to do a lot of apologizing for if I get into heaven.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 247
Collections: Top Aziraphale Recs





	The Body's Share

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my heartfelt thanks go to to [curlycrowley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlycrowley/pseuds/curlycrowley) for beta work and emotional support.

_Circa 435 AD_

Aziraphale was in the Abbey of Saint Victor in Marseilles, and had been for nearly five years. He’d gotten wind that the writings of some monk there were going to be important, so he’d insinuated himself into the monastery and worked copying out scripts, first in the guesthouse and then in his little private cell.

If the monks were a little less austere—less _monkish_ —Aziraphale thought he possibly could have enjoyed the whole thing. As it was, he reminded himself that this was all for the greater good. And he cheated outrageously with miracled food and wine.

And he thought of Crowley.

He found that he did that often anyway—his friend, his opposite and equal, his one constant here on Earth. But given that a monk’s life seemed to predominantly revolve around thinking about sin, the pervasiveness of sin, and how to guard against sin, it was especially rare, here, to _not_ have Crowley on his mind.

 _For the subtle serpent is ever watching our heel, that is, lying in wait and endeavoring to trip us up…_ he wrote, and he smiled. Crowley should be pleased, he thought, to hear how seriously the humans were taking his inventions, how much credit he was getting for what seemed to have been built into human nature, and he wondered if he ought to feel bad about his own secret pleasure in that. He imagined leaving the monastery, seeking him out, and sharing it with him: how they’d caught onto the theme of the deadly sins, but they were still a little mixed around on the numbers and the particulars.

_And the signs of humility are these:_

He often thought of seeking out Crowley. The reason might change, the pretext under which he left to find him, but the allure was always the same.

 _Gentleness and constant patience_ , he wrote, and he thought of Crowley—not as the architect of original sin, but as the being who had reassured Aziraphale at the wall; as the friend who had not begrudged Aziraphale any of his blunders, but forgiven him again and again; as the one who had let him apologize, and tease, and trust.

 _...Tenthly, if he is not easily moved or too ready to laugh. By such signs and the like is true humility recognized._ Aziraphale shook his head. Crowley would laugh, indeed, to know that they were getting hung up on trivialities like humor. Or—would he? After all, Aziraphale had come to truly believe that Crowley’s heart wasn’t in Hell’s mission. He did what he had to to keep his independence, his post on Earth, just enough to buy himself the license to...whatever it was he did to pass the time in the years that Aziraphale didn’t see him.

Sometimes, Aziraphale allowed himself to believe that Crowley wanted to stay on Earth because of _him_.

A foolish thought, but one that warmed him on lonely nights. Quiet stretches when he did not sleep, but sat and thought of the future, and the past, and wide, golden eyes.

_When humility has once been genuinely secured, then at once it leads you on by a still higher step to love which knows no fear—_

Aziraphale sat back from his small desk abruptly, staring at the words he’d copied. _A love which knows no fear._ He felt as if all the air had been driven from his lungs. Was such a fearlessness possible?

 _When humility has once been genuinely secured, then at once it leads you on by a still higher step to love which knows no fear; and through this you begin, without any effort and as it were naturally, to keep up everything that you formerly observed with fear, no longer now from regard of punishment or fear of it, but from love of goodness itself, and delight in virtue_.

 _In order to preserve the mind and body in a perfect condition, abstinence from food alone is not sufficient_ , _unless the other virtues of the mind as well are joined to it._

Aziraphale rolled his eyes at the text as he copied it out. To think that the humans supposed that goodness could be had without laughter, that it required silence and privation—surely that was impossible.

After all… He thought of a room lit with oil candles, the seawater taste of oysters on his lips, and a demon’s smile. And long before that—a hand held forth, offering, and bright, tart nectar in his mouth.

> _“Have you tried any yet?”_
> 
> _“Food? Why would I?”_
> 
> _“It’s good,” Crawly had said. He reached into a pocket of his raiment and pulled out a round, red fruit the size of his fist. “Here, have a pomegranate.”_
> 
> _The demon traced the outside of the fruit with the nail of one slender finger and Aziraphale saw marks like a knife score its surface. Then Crawly dug both his thumbs into one of the cuts and pulled the fruit apart. He held one chunk out to the angel._
> 
> _“Try it,” he encouraged. “Just the seeds.”_
> 
> _Aziraphale paused. “You’re sure you’re not tempting me,” he repeated._
> 
> _Crawly rolled his eyes and looked impatient._
> 
> _“Oh, very well,” Aziraphale said, and he took the fruit. Trying not to feel self-conscious, he used his fingertips to scoop some of the red pips out and into his mouth. He bit down tentatively and was surprised with delight when the arils burst and he tasted the light nectar inside._
> 
> _Crawly was watching him closely, his golden eyes wide._
> 
> _“Oh I see,” Aziraphale said after a moment, and he scooped out some more. “Those are lovely.”_
> 
> _“You’ve—“ Crawly swallowed and then continued speaking. “—never eaten? Anything?”_
> 
> _“Didn’t see the appeal.”_

Beings didn’t only deserve such joys; they _needed_ them. He needed them.

 _And so humility must first be learned by the virtue of obedience, and grinding toil and bodily exhaustion_.

He wasn’t fond of “grinding toil,” but it brought to mind one wearying day in Greece—surely at least a thousand years past—when he’d been all but immobile with exhaustion, weary in body and mind and aching heart, and Crawly had shown up and whisked him off to the baths. He’d led Aziraphale into the water, brought up handfuls of sweet sand to scrub away the dirt on his back and neck and legs, and sat with him in the dark, vaulted vapor baths.

 _The possession of money must not only be avoided, but the desire for it must be utterly rooted out. For it is not enough not to possess it—a thing which comes to many as a matter of necessity—but we ought, if by chance it is offered, not even to admit the wish to have it_. _The madness of anger should be controlled; the downcast look of dejection overcome—_

—“Oh, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing,” he’d said, and he’d been quieting Aziraphale’s doubt ever since—

_—vainglory should be despised—_

—And there, in his mind’s eye, was Crowley, dancing in the firelight in a dress of sheer and shimmering silks woven through with points of gold that flashed like the stars, cheeks bright with effort and eyes sparking with delight when Aziraphale said how lovely he was—

_—the disdainfulness of pride trampled underfoot; and the shifting and wandering thoughts of the mind restrained by continual recollection of God._

_And the slippery wanderings of our heart should be brought back again as often as our crafty enemy creeps into the innermost recesses of the soul_.

An apt phrase, Aziraphale thought, for surely Crowley _had_ twined himself all through Aziraphale’s heart and being. Present when Aziraphale most needed him, sly and cunning and quick-witted and so damnably delightful, with a smile like a second sun. Oh, how Aziraphale treasured the moments when their walls would drop and Crowley would look at him, really _look_ at him—

—there was that ache in his heart. That thready speed of his pulse. That sense of rightness.

 _It is first of all necessary to purify carefully the hidden recesses of our heart_.

 _Fuck off,_ Aziraphale thought, even as he carefully transcribed precisely what had been written down. Not for him to interfere, after all.

In every dip of his pen, in every curve of the letters, there was Crowley: teasing, taunting, comforting, _there_. A perfect curve in the candlelight of the baths, a fire-red fan of hair as he danced, golden eyes and the taste of salt.

 _By this, we mean that bodily purity consists not so much in forswearing lust, but in integrity of the heart_.

Aziraphale slammed his reed pen down.

If he explained himself to any of these monks, they should cast him out as a devil, as one too far from the path of grace. His heart, though, was steadfast. What explanations were there? This was either the work of temptation, or it was _right_.

A conviction built in him.

It took barely a thought to send his senses out; Crowley was still holed up outside of some village in Britannia. Manuscript in hand, Aziraphale was gone in blinking of an eye.

* * *

Perhaps the distant remove of Crowley’s home deterred human visitors, but it made no difference to Aziraphale. He didn’t knock, but willed the door of the round stone house to open. He walked in, and there was Crowley, blinking up at him in surprise. In the center of the room was a fire, and sunlight fell in from a round hole in the roof.

“Tell me you didn’t do this,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley stood. “I don’t do anything if I can help it, you know that.”

“I’m not joking, Crowley. _Tell me_.”

“What is it I didn’t do?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale held out the parchment. Crowley leaned forward and squinted at it.

“I didn’t write a treatise, that’s for sure,” he said.

“The cardinal faults,” Aziraphale explained.

“Oh.” Crowley processed that a moment. “Well, you know I planted the idea. The humans are the ones _doing_ them.”

“And you’ve never tempted me to them?”

Crowley’s look was guarded as he turned his face back up to study Aziraphale.

“Gluttony? Lust?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley shifted from foot to foot. “Wh—” he began, but the angel interrupted.

“ _Tell me,_ ” he said. “Tell me you haven’t been tempting me.”

A host of emotions crossed Crowley’s face in rapidfire flashes. Amusement gave way to confusion, to bewilderment, which stiffened into anger. “Aziraphale,” the demon bit out, “the last time I so much as _joked_ about involving you with sin, you walked out on me! I certainly am not going to _tempt_ you—hang on,” he said, and his mobile expression shifted again, softened into wide-eyed shock. “Why are you asking?”

In lieu of an answer, Aziraphale crossed the room in powerful steps, spurred on by whatever it was (he knew what it was, _had_ known what it was, had denied what it was) that had been stirring in him for a millennium or more. Crowley gave way before him until his back was against the far wall, with Aziraphale’s hands braced on either side of him. The demon’s mouth was open, his breathing quick, and Aziraphale felt a fire burning within himself. Crowley looked at him with no fear, but with awesome focus and wonder—and was that hope? Something bright and splendid was dawning across the demon’s face, and in Aziraphale, a towering need rose to match it.

“Tell me this isn’t your doing,” he commanded, one last time. One last chance for Crowley to confess—Crowley, who did not lie to him.

Because if he _hadn’t_ done it...

Crowley’s voice was pleading, his words too fast, his eyes hungry, moving first from Aziraphale’s eyes to his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, angel, but I swear, I _swear,_ I haven’t tampered with—”

Aziraphale cut him off with a brutal kiss. He left one hand on the wall and used the other to hold and direct Crowley’s chin, keeping the demon in place as he tasted him for the first time. There was no pomegranate nectar or sea-salt tang on his lips; just smoke and starlight and a flood of wanting that nearly overwhelmed Aziraphale.

Crowley stood as still as the stones against which Aziraphale pressed him; his chest against Aziraphale’s didn’t even move with breath.

The kiss ended and Aziraphale drew back a little, still holding onto Crowley and breathing hard.

“Do that again,” Crowley said in the merest whisper.

A lightning-bright peal of satisfaction rang through Aziraphale, and it felt as if the world _settled_ under his feet, as if a loose piece had clicked into place and things were, for the first time, as they should be. He pulled the demon forward, and he leaned in and kissed him in a string of hungry, open-mouthed kisses that might have bruised them both if this were not _Crowley_. As it was, the demon met his force with a fierce submission, opening up to him and going weak as Aziraphale licked into his mouth.

“I should have trusted you better,” Aziraphale said, some time later when he’d had to wrap one arm around Crowley’s waist to keep the demon upright, crushing him to his own chest until he wondered if he would even be _able_ to let go.

His other hand came up to wind into the wild mane of Crowley’s curls and pull his head close for another kiss, and then to tilt it back as he traced a line of sharp kisses along his jawline, up towards the serpents’ mark at his ear.

“I don’t— _fuck_ , don’t stop, you could do that forever,” panted Crowley (and Aziraphale thought that indeed he could), “—don’t understand.”

Aziraphale sucked the lobe of Crowley’s ear into his mouth then gently dragged his teeth along it. Crowley slid a little further down towards the floor, so that Aziraphale was almost entirely supporting his weight.

“What were you asking?” the demon continued, lifting one foot up to run along Aziraphale’s leg.

“If this—“ Aziraphale said, and he shifted his weight against Crowley, rutting his hard prick against Crowley’s hip, “—was interference from you. The way you’re with me all the time. The way I want you.”

“Why?”

Aziraphale pressed a kiss to one side of Crowley’s mouth, then the other. “Because if it wasn’t from you, it’s only my own desire,” he said.

“And that—matters?”

“Gracious, yes,” Aziraphale said, dizzy with the heady knowledge of the taste and feel of Crowley’s skin under his lips. “In that case, it’s this body’s share in what is in my heart. It’s only fitting to want you, husband mine.”

Crowley sputtered, although it seemed to be as much in response to the way Aziraphale had picked him up and pinned him to the wall as to his statement.

“I—your— _what_?” was all he managed to say.

“Husband,” Aziraphale said a little dreamily. He had not thought of this before, but now as he spoke the words, he felt very sure of them. “Did you not seek me out and come to me, there, at the beginning of the world? Did I not shelter you beneath my wing?” He nipped Crowley’s throat and gloried in the demon’s gasp. “Have I not eaten from your hand, and you from mine?” He pulled up Crowley’s tunic and ran his hand up his belly, down his side, and dug his fingers into his hips. “Have we not shared our home, the Earth, four thousand years?” And he reached into Crowley’s breeches and wrapped his fist around Crowley’s cock. “Have you not stamped your mark upon me? Have I not loved you above all others?”

Crowley’s breathing was ragged and reedy by this point, his head flung back and his whole body pressed against Aziraphale’s. The angel bit along his shoulder as he stroked Crowley, leaving little marks that he ran over with his tongue until the demon was trembling with clinging delight.

“Every sacrament, every sign they’ve invented, we’ve shared between us,” Aziraphale whispered into his ear, and Crowley shuddered and arched his back. “Should the name, then, be any surprise?”

He pulled back the hand that was stroking Crowley—the demon nearly snarled—just long enough to pull Crowley’s breeches the rest of the way down and hike up his own robe. When Crowley reached down to untie the wrap of Aziraphale’s breechcloth, his hands were shaking and frantic.

“Please,” Crowley begged, wanton, “please—please, I’ll make it good. I’ll make you feel so good.”

Aziraphale kissed him again, tasted him again, and slowly set him down from where he’d been holding him. “I know you will,” he said.

At once, Crowley slid down the wall until he was on his knees in front of Aziraphale. He looked up once like a penitent, and raised his hands to Aziraphale’s cock. He grasped and stroked it and then leaned forward and took the tip between his open lips.

Light burst in Aziraphale’s veins and electricity trickled through his vision as Crowley took more of him into his mouth. He looked down, down to see that beautiful crown of glorious red hair bobbing at his waist, and he exulted. Still supporting himself against the wall with one hand, Aziraphale reached down with the other and wound his fingers through Crowley’s hair, and gasped when the demon _moaned_.

Eager as he was, it wasn’t long before the muscles of Aziraphale’s legs and stomach were tensing, straining with desire and fulfillment, with satisfaction and anticipation. Crowley’s clever, tender hands held his thighs, his fingers sharp as need, and they pulled him closer as if Crowley would devour Aziraphale entirely. At last, Aziraphale could not help himself, and bucked his hips, thrusting forward into the delicious heat and wetness of Crowley’s mouth, and he thrust again, and again, and then he came with an inarticulate shout of joy.

Crowley’s hands relented as he swallowed and placed light kisses along the side of Aziraphale’s cock, wringing fresh shivers from the angel. And then Crowley was standing again, his arms wrapping around Aziraphale, his body pressed against him once again. He tasted sweet and greedy, and Aziraphale was ravenous for more. He bit and kissed and licked until he had forgotten the taste of anything but Crowley’s mouth and skin; his hands grasped and felt until all the rest of the world was insubstantial and only Crowley, hot and bright in his arms, was solid.

He stripped the rest of Crowley’s clothes and feasted—with sight and taste and touch—on the splendour of his body. They stumbled away from the wall and soon Crowley was laid out on his own table, his legs splayed open as if the bone structure of his hips was only a suggestion, and Aziraphale set himself to the earnest business of learning his friend and lover’s body.

He had Crowley’s legs hoisted up over his own shoulders, and he knelt on the floor of Crowley’s home and sucked and licked Crowley’s cock, and the soft skin behind it, and the tight heat behind that. The sound of Crowley’s wordless noises as Aziraphale explored him with gentle, demanding hands was the only song Aziraphale wanted in his ears for the rest of all time.

Aziraphale dragged their joint pleasure on as long as he could, but when he had three fingers curled inside the demon, Crowley started begging, and Aziraphale could not have denied him if all existence depended on it. He stood and ran his hands up along Crowley’s hips, his sides, up to cradle his face as he kissed him again. Then he made himself ready and pressed against his entrance.

“ _Please_ ,” Crowley breathed.

He plunged in with one awful thrust and then stilled, certain that any movement now would undo him, would tear him apart. Reality slipped, and Aziraphale saw stars—filling the shell of Crowley’s skin, bursting with light from his eyes and mouth and fingertips—and wings, and a broken crown of fire; he saw it all from every angle, from each of his countless eyes, as if he was in Crowley and Crowley was _also_ wrapped up in him, as if he surrounded his love utterly.

Crowley propped himself up on his elbows, sending comets trailing through the air, and locked his legs around Aziraphale’s waist, and the love in his eyes shone like the first sun.

Crowley rocked his hips forward, just once.

The spell broke, and Aziraphale could move—had to move, could not hold still or even _want_ to hold still. He pounded into Crowley, urged on by his lover’s incoherent pleading, by his demands, by the movement of their two bodies together.

With one hand, he held onto Crowley like a lifeline; with the other; he stroked Crowley’s cock, revelling in the hard reality of it, in the way Crowley writhed, sinuous and exultant, under his ministrations.

He could have hung in that moment for all eternity, but together they urged each other onward, upward, until Crowley was calling his name and spilling over both their bellies, and Aziraphale came after him, trembling and sweating and utterly replete.

Aziraphale bent forward until he was chest-to-chest and forehead-to-forehead with Crowley, their harsh breath mingling, and kissed him with all the love and devotion he had, all the promises he was prepared to make heavy on his tongue.

“Next time,” he said when the raging of his heart had quieted, “there will be pillows and oils and all the fine things you deserve.”

“I’ll make a garland for your crown,” Crowley replied, and he laced his fingers through Aziraphale’s sweat-damp hair.

“You’ll drink from my cup.”

 _Next time we’ll do it properly_ , they meant. _Like lovers do_. Like bride and bridegroom both at once.

“Next time,” Crowley said, as if the words were a treasure beyond counting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments :D 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [thelasthomelyurl](https://thelasthomelyurl.tumblr.com/)! Asks, prompts, and DMs are always open! 
> 
> This story actually started out being part of [The Invention of Vice](https://thelasthomelyurl.tumblr.com/post/189946519035/the-invention-of-vice) but they wound up being very tonally different so I made the call to split them into two separate stories. 
> 
> Text is sourced from John Cassian's _Institutions_ although I took a few creative liberties. My apologies to any historical Christian/Orthodox scholars. Even more apologies to John Cassian and CS Lewis, from whom the title comes. 
> 
> I've got a handful of other good omens fics you might enjoy, rated everywhere from G to M, that you can find under this pseudonym. There's fluff, there's angst—there's even a fic or two that has an actual _plot_ , if you can believe it! If you want more of Aziraphale and religion and smut, I'd suggest [your slightest look easily will unclose me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723823) and if you like the idea of Crowley dancing in a silky dress as much as I do, you could try [he I was seeking, or she I was seeking](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171941) although it's...different. 
> 
> Take care, and thanks again!


End file.
